Happily Forever After
by NE8675309
Summary: Aidan opens up his door to find Sally waiting for him. How does eternity measure beyond death's door? An overly fluffy continuation, post series finale.


***A/N - Hello boys, girls and everyone in between. This is definitely one of my more obscure fandoms/ships. Though the end of the series was very wrapped up, I wanted to add just a little more. My cousin said when I love something, I have to be a part of it. This is absolute proof, lol. So here is my headcanon for Aidan Sally. Thanks for reading. -Nikki**

* * *

In some ways, Aidan was sure the kiss between them lasted for years, or at least years in the sense of the old plane they had left behind. Time didn't exist here; he felt it from the moment the misty white haze enveloped him. The simple yet overwhelming touch meandered between the two of them, their lips grazing in that shy, teasing patient way he could have sworn they had experienced a thousand times before. When they finally pulled away, Sally was beaming at him. "If that's what your 'hello kiss' is like, I don't know if I can handle a 'goodbye kiss' from you."

He caressed her jawline with his index finger, acutely aware that he couldn't stop touching her, even if he wanted to; his skin was a magnet to hers. "Let's not find out."

There was an overjoyed shyness in her ebony eyes. "I don't think we can. You brought me here, for eternity." She wrapped her arms around him, looking into his eyes. "It looks like we're stuck together forever."

He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and silently marveled at his ability to do so. He hadn't touched her, really touched her, in so long. It felt right, like an entitlement he had been too long denied. "Oh, the horror!" He said with a sarcastic smile, before leaning in to kiss her again, this time firmer, no longer treating the touch as if it would collide with air. She was here, he could feel her; this must be heaven, he realized.

After the hunger, not of blood or lust, but something much stronger, dulled to an almost comforting ache, they both pulled away. He held her hand as they walked side by side in the pearly stillness. "What is this place?"

"Whatever you want it to be."

"What about you?"

She seemed to understand what he was really asking. She spoke softly, watching the ground as they walked, the world of benevolent fog fading around, making way for the world of his desire. "My door wasn't ready yet, not until you would be there to join me."

He laughed. "So you high-jacked my door?"

She looked up at him, playfully riled up. "That is so like you to just assume this is your door."

"So, it's not?"

She sat down on the materializing couch from their living room. "It's our door."

"A two-for-one special?" He asked, fully amused. Moving slow and unsure, he sat beside her on the couch, still holding her hand, his thumb brushing against her soft skin. "That seems like cutting corners." He joked.

"For the ghosts of a re-dead zombie and a former vampire?" She inquired with a lifted brow.

"Touché." He grinned, eyes crinkling with the only wrinkles she'd ever known him to have.

"The truth is that for some people their door cannot exist without a certain person. Those people open up to mist and wait in a peaceful stillness. The time passes fast enough."

"And yet, you said 'Finally.'"

She shrugged simply. "What can I say? I'm impatient."

Kissing her hand, her guilty grin faded away as her eyes held him in a quiet moment of pure affection. It brought him a light pleasant feeling as if his gut was dizzy; not just the look, but the knowledge that her door didn't exist without him, just as his didn't exist without her. "So this is heaven?"

Her lip turned up in a modest half-smile. "I have yet to witness any kind of religious affiliation, but I do know that it is meant to be a place that offers peace to resolved souls."

It made perfect sense to him. He couldn't be resolved until Josh and Nora knew he was okay and the only person who had ever brought him true peace was Sally. That is what she had always done for him from the day he met her. It was what had been pulling him to her for so long, even when he chose to deny it. In a sick way he'd been comforted by the fact that she was a ghost. His immortal life had seemed less of a curse knowing she would be there, but he left it at that. It was all it could be; she was incorporeal and he was an active monster. Friendship had served them well. Down the other way only heartache and disappointment was paved for both of them. They were supposed to have forever together, maybe not 'together' … but it had ended too soon.

He looked at their entwined hands, noticing how the age of his had faded. It seemed they would get forever after all.

He wanted to understand what took place the day she was ripped from his sight. "What happened?"

She smiled meekly. "On my way home from that other timeline, Donna warned me that I would shoot forward a little too far, until snapping back into place. In that brief moment of being disoriented I saw you kill Josh." He froze. "You were completely crazed; it wasn't you. I couldn't stop it and it destroyed me to see it. Before I could see what happened next, I snapped back and you guys were watching Robbie get pulled away by an ambulance."

He remembered vividly that she looked at him with fear at first, before asking if he remembered. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She shook her head. "If there is one thing that trip taught me, it was that talking about the future is what affected it. I was afraid that saying something is what would put us on that path." She paused. "It didn't matter. It still happened. I think Kenny compelled you or something. All of a sudden you were in a rage and you were yelling at Josh, but you couldn't see me." She looked as if she was reliving the fear. He watched her closely in complete silence. "You had your hands on Josh's neck and you had tracked Kenny's ashes along the floor." She breathed heavily.

"I panicked and suddenly time was weighed down. I got us out of there, Josh and Nora, I mean. You followed us to the basement. I knew what I had to do, I just ..." she sighed. "By the time you had reached the basement, I was out of time. There weren't many spells that were guaranteed to help. Seeing Kenny, nothing but dust on your shoes and your face full of distraught grief and fury," she shook her head. "I just wanted to bring you peace."

"At the sacrifice of yourself?" He asked, baffled by her choice.

"Haven't you been listening?" There was no anger in her voice, only a brief, but biting sadness. "I was haunted by it."

His brow furled as he touched her face. "By what?"

"Kenny." The concern on his face turned to confusion. "He had become nothing but cinders and I knew that that was your end. Even if I could stop you from killing Josh; someday you would end up like Kenny. If I was going to do magic again, it had to be worth it."

"I would say you were ripped off."

She shoved him. "Did you feel any peace?"

He looked at her sadly, his maple brown eyes looking all the way through her. "I woke up to a heavy heartbeat and you vanishing from my life. It was hard to feel any real peace after that." They were leaned back on the couch where he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "I'm sorry that it wasn't worth it."

She tangled her hand in his, kissing the back of his palm. "We're here. Right now. In the end, you were more than dust and that makes it completely worth it." She looked up at him and pecked his jawline. "I just wanted an afterlife for you. It was wrong to imagine you ceasing to exist. I'm just sorry, you didn't get more time."

He shrugged. "If I'd have known what was waiting for me, I wouldn't have resisted." He kissed her forehead. "I thought you had given it all up for nothing. Every second felt so full of guilt knowing that you should've been there, but you weren't because of me, because of what you gave to end my curse."

"I was afraid I had cheated you out of something."

He snorted. "Yeah, you definitely robbed me out of an eternity alone, lifetimes full of bloodlust and death." He smiled, the sarcasm fading away. "No, Sally. You gave me something beautiful, no matter how brief."

"It was a good cheeseburger, huh?" She grinned, her tongue pressed to the back of her teeth, soaking in her self-satisfaction.

"It was a great cheeseburger." He whipped his head back to her. "You saw that?"

She nodded. "I have my ways. I'll show you later."

"So you saw everything?"

"Not everything…" Her voice lowered.

He scoffed. "You Peeping Tom."

"Don't be embarrassed about your Britney Spears-esque meltdown; it made me feel really loved." The laughter in her voice filled his guilty ears.

"What about…" he hoped she hadn't seen him begging to be changed, although he doubted it since she seemed so happy and not at all betrayed.

"When you tried to return my sweet little gift of humanity?" She nodded, looking off to the side. "Yep, I tuned in for that one too."

"You're not pissed?"

"Oh, I was. You were scared. I understand that now." She sighed. "The second time around, I saw my death and even with the knowledge of what awaited me, I was terrified. You were going into the unknown completely unprepared, especially after living for almost 300 years. You were afraid."

He nodded, desperate to change the subject of his cowardice. "What was it like? What were we like?" She pulled away to look at him. "In that other life. You never had a chance to tell me."

She grinned devilishly and the excitement in her onyx eyes filled him with an astounding affection. "I can show you."

"You can?" He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Using magic?"

"Aidan, honey. We're dead… like dead to the second power. We're double dead." She laughed. "I don't need magic. This is an all-encompassing, non-existent plane. Not to sound like a cheesy children's book author from the 90's, but 'anything is possible.'"

He laughed, deciding not to remind her that he happened to live through 3 different 90's. "Show me."

She narrowed her eyes with a playful smirk, the tone of her voice mock serious. "Viewer discretion is advised."

It appeared before him as if projected onto a wall, where there was none. He watched the night she died until her entire disposition changed and he realized she had possessed herself. It awed him to see that while she was facing off with her killer, there was no fear in her eyes, only fury.

She sat beside him tense and focused on the scene before them, despite that she had already lived it. He couldn't stop his sound of approval when she kneed Danny in the groin. "Shh. There'll be no talking during the 'Sally is a badass' portion of the film." He bit down a laughed just in time to see her punch her ex-fiancé. As she left the house he looked back at her, ignoring the interaction with her friend.

"You know how temperamental magic can be; why did you do it?"

She shrugged. "It wasn't like I planned on saving myself. I just couldn't watch it anymore." She sighed. "It's hard enough to have to look at your own death, but the lead up was complete torture. He was standing there berating me when I did nothing wrong and I just kept trying to appease him." She sneered in disgust. "It made me sick. Talk about adding insult to injury. Literally."

"I think some people would consider an untimely death via head bash into stairs to qualify as more than injury."

Her shoulders bobbed in a haphazard shrug. "Potato, potahto." He laughed. "Wait… wait, wait. It's coming up."

He returned his attention the vision before them. "You were going to avoid us?"

"I didn't want to screw up the future more than I already had." She snorted. "In hindsight, it's pretty ironic."

"What made you change your mind?"

Her smile grew soft, still clinging to an edge of excitement. "You'll see." At that moment, he saw himself heading towards her. It was surreal, seeing himself from a 3rd person perspective doing and saying things he never had. Her responding smile warmed his heart. He watched their encounter closely, determined to absorb every piece of this other life he could've lived, the one that she actually had.

There was a palpable energy between them and he could clearly read his own attraction, his eyes aglow with a slight predatory heat, vastly different from the gaze he gave most humans who looked good enough to eat, although when looking at her, it definitely carried a double meaning.

Beside him, she smiled brightly watching the alternate Aidan. "It was your eyes." He whispered into her ears.

"Hmm?" She looked up at him.

"The reason I looked at you like that." He smiled and looked down at her. "It was your eyes." Though he doubted he could've forgotten her smile. Alternate Sally laughed, somewhat maniacally and he loved her all the more for it.

"You remember?"

"No, but I know me and I know what made me notice you in our reality." The vision of her beamed and he was taken aback by the expression. He'd never known anyone beside Sally to smile like that, it was so honest and lovable, just like her. It was dangerously infectious.

"Well, there it is. You definitely made an impression."

"You ain't seen nothing yet." She laughed.

Time passed. He laughed beside her. "Were you stalking us?"

"I was waiting for you guys to be ready to move in."

"You get a third chance at life and the first thing you do isn't win the lottery or travel the world, but bide your time so your roommates will move in with you?"

"No, the first thing I did was torch that sweater."

He clicked his tongue. "Ah, yes, right, the sweater."

"Yeah, you know because priorities first." She said matter-of-fact.

"Naturally." He replied teasingly. His light laugh was cut short as a familiar face entered the vision. It was Rebecca, confirming their date for that evening. He didn't know if he could handle seeing what would come next.

Something incredible happened. During his date, Sally walked up and completely humiliated him, chasing Rebecca away. He turned and faced the spirit sitting next to him. That was why he loved her. All the things she could be doing, but instead she was saving Rebecca from him, in hopes of saving him from himself.

As their little family grew closer, he noticed the energy growing between them, a connection that somehow eluded both their attention.

He felt something smolder in his gut when they first kissed, almost like muscle memory, or it's reflection. Everything came into place so effortlessly and it seemed so right. It was baffling to witness himself, a version of himself that he didn't know, fall in love in a way he completely understood. He was jealous for the time they got to spend together.

The hardest part was watching Josh's life start to fall apart. He saw it coming before Alternate Sally had. She had really tried to get Josh and Nora together, but had become distracted by her relationship with Alternate him. He couldn't blame her; he was distracted, simply watching them. The first time they slept together, he couldn't even blink. It was astounding to see everything that transpired between them, to not remember any of it, but to feel the truth of it all with crystal clarity.

She wanted to stop watching after they said they loved one another, but he couldn't, he had to know. They broke up and he empathized with the crippling heartache, but it was nothing compared to the night she died.

The pain and fury that surged through him was so strong it made him feel like he was still alive. Alternate Sally had been trying to stop the fight, but she was killed in the crossfire. He held her tighter in his arms.

The ache of losing her was all it took to bring him back into the arms of Bishop, who had no problem capitalizing on the grief his Alternate self was drowning in. That same night when that other part of him murdered Ray so viciously, he felt an unnerving sense of justice. He knew it was wrong and he knew that Ray hadn't meant to kill her, but what made it so easy to feel no shame for the thoughtless crime, was that not once did Ray express any guilt or sorrow for what he had done. But she had been right, he was a monster; losing her had caused him to completely lose that fragile tether to his humanity. After that, it was harder to watch. She hadn't realized how bad things had become, how lost he was without her, but he understood. Loss like that, so heavy and endless, made him vacant. But through it all, she still saved him.

In the end, despite everything, they both still loved each other. "I'm thankful that you listened to me." Sally looked back at him. "Even through everything I had done and what I'd become, you were still able to love me." She nodded, unable to interrupt the telling timbre of his voice. "I don't think I've ever done anything in all of my combined lifetimes that make me even the slightest bit deserving of you and what you've done for me."

She laid her hand flat on his chest, leaning up to kiss him softly. "Remember how I said anything was possible?"

"Mmm… vaguely." He murmured lazily against her mouth.

She edged her way up his chest, moving until she was straddling his lap. She kissed him gently and pulled away, looking into his eyes as she combed her fingers through his hair. "Is it absolutely unforgivable if I say that I am grateful that you had to live as a vampire, because I got to meet you?"

He laughed. "Not if you don't mind me saying that I'm happy you died so I could meet you as a ghost."

She grinned and placed small kisses on his neck, whispering gently in between each one. "Then I guess it's settled. We're both terrible people."

He replied in a breathy chuckle. "And yet, we both cheated the odds to receive our door, in spite of being monsters."

They kissed each other with fierce necessity. Even with the visions of them together replaying in his head, each touch was new and exciting, but still comforting in a way that reminded him of home. She used her one-sided memories to her advantage, driving him crazy in the most deliciously excruciating way.

He had had sex thousands of times, made love a dozen or so times, but he had never experienced that purest form of intimacy that he felt with Sally. No one had ever seen the darkest sides of him, all the worst he had to offer and accepted him unconditionally. When most people saw the monster, she had seen passed it, to the man who was trying, who wanted to do better, be better and she believed in him. It filled him with a love and need for her that he couldn't even comprehend. There was no earthly or unearthly reason why he should be allowed to be with such a compassionate, loving, funny, beautiful, caring and frustratingly nosy woman, yet somehow, here he was.

Each touch was ecstasy to his corporeal soul. The experience was like none on Earth; he knew that part of it had to do with the fact that they were dead, but he also knew that part of the indescribable perfection was because it was Sally. Joy, pleasure, love, all of it was heightened because that's all there was, that's all that existed here in this place with the two of them.

He held her firmly against his chest, finally experiencing the simplest gesture of closeness that had evaded him until now. "I could do this forever." His voice was enveloped with satisfied peace.

"What?" She breathed. "Ghost-bone?"

They both laughed. "No. I meant this." He rubbed his hand along her upper arm. "Just touch you." He looked into her eyes. "Back when I thought we would actually make it out of this alive." He paused. 'Well, as alive as we were ... I imagined an eternity in that trailer with you; no touching, merely existing side by side and it brought me peace just to think about, but now…" He breathed. "Just being able to feel you, it's …" He struggled for the word.

"Orgasmic?" She joked.

"Heaven." He offered a cheesy grin.

She kissed the spot on his bare chest where her head rested. She felt the same way, more relieved and thankful than she could possibly articulate. She never thought they would get this lucky. When she had chosen to sacrifice her spirit for him, she had never been more scared or sure of anything in her life, after or otherwise. She had hoped turning him human would be enough to grant him the right to an afterlife, so she welcomed oblivion, only to open her eyes with full understanding.

She missed out on her door the first time around because she had to know he was okay; it only seemed fitting that sacrificing herself to make sure he would be is what would bring her peace and grant her that resolution she had sought for so long. Somehow after everything, this was her new reality.

"Remember what I said I would show you later?" She asked, sitting up from the bed that had appeared beneath them at some point.

He looked at her with a tender heat smoldering in his eyes. "I'd say I've seen all I need to keep me preoccupied for all eternity."

She leaned down and kissed him chastely on the lips. "Sweet." She lingered before forcing herself up again. "Trust me. You're going to want to see this."

Reluctantly, he sat up, one arm wrapped around his knees, the other tracing light patterns onto her back. He kissed her shoulder. "Okay, show me."

It was different kind of vision, softer and closer. The sight brought a saccharine grin to his face. Josh and Nora were bustling around a kitchen. Josh was clearly manic, trying to prepare what looked like dinner. Nora was chasing two toddlers, who seemed to be the source of Josh's anxiety, around the table. They all looked so blissfully human; it filled Aidan with pride where he once expected envy.

It had worked, their experiment. It had been exactly what Josh needed, which meant Aidan had been right all along. He felt his silent heart warm his chest when he heard and Nora and Josh call out their kids' names. Sally leaned her head on his shoulder. "How do you know how to do all of this?" He asked, unable to look away from their friends.

"It's hard to explain." She faced him. "It's like I opened my eyes and here I was with all this knowledge. I just knew."

"That wasn't very hard to explain."

"Maybe not explain, but it's definitely hard for me to fathom. It feels like a manual that has been programmed into my brain."

He laughed. "Does that mean we're in the Matrix?"

She laughed sarcastically and awarded him with an annoyed expression. "God, I hope not."

He thought for a second. "Maybe it's you."

"What?"

"Well, you've been dead for a while and you were supposed to get your door years ago. Maybe you're just more connected to the afterlife."

"Or, I'm just insanely skilled." She smirked.

He kissed her on the cheek. "That seems more likely." She nodded along with his agreement.

"Speaking of my mad skills, you are not going to believe this."

He looked down at the rambunctious toddlers named after them. "I already can't believe how much time has passed."

"I know." The vision was fading away. "It feels like a few days at most. That's the way it works here."

He smiled, knowing that it couldn't have felt like more than an hour or two that she had to wait before he joined her. She really wasn't kidding; she was incredibly impatient.

"I know of a way to communicate with them … well, kind of."

"We can communicate with them from beyond the grave?"

She scoffed. "We already knew that. Hell, I communicated with you from beyond the grave. What I'm saying is we can communicate with them from beyond the door."

"I want to help."

* * *

Josh and Nora awoke on the picnic blanket with wistful sighs, both still reeling from their dreams. Sally laughed. "Dream-weaving … if only he knew how on the nose he is."

They watched their friends chase the children around the meadow. "Why?" Aidan asked in an awed whisper.

Sally answered back cheerfully. "Just to let them know we're okay?"

"But why am I okay?" She grasped at the sadness in his voice. "How did I earn any of this?"

She put her arm around his shoulder and pressed his head to hers. "It's simple really." She steadily combed her fingers through his hair, speaking in a soft voice. "The real you, the human Aidan who lived so long ago, he was a good man. When he fought in the war, he killed for necessity, survival; he wasn't a murderer. Your curse made you unnatural and tore at who you were. Sometimes, you failed your humanity, but you never lost it, not completely. Because despite what you were, all you wanted was to be a man, a good man who valued life and love. That is who I fell in love with. You found your way back and the spell made sure you stayed that way. You would've never done all you did or," she breathed shallowly. "Killed all those people if Bishop hadn't turned you into a monster. You never wanted a life full of death, even though you took to it sometimes, you never forgot the people that suffered. If atonement really does save the soul, then there was never a soul more worthy." She kissed his head. "The fact that you are thinking about that now, after you successfully crossed the finish line, shows that your guilt, your regret, it's genuine. You more than anyone are the consequences of your actions."

"Do you really believe all that?"

"Absolutely. That man who tried so hard be better, even though it went against his very nature, that's who you are and who you fought to be. It's why I fell in love with you."

Aidan understood what she was trying to say, but still found that he couldn't accept the praise, not yet, perhaps at some point in the span of eternity. He looked back to their friends and smirked. "So, how are we going to kill the next 70 or so years?"

Sally's knowing brow lifted, well onto his purposeful subject change. She merely shook her head with an amused grin and kissed his neck. "I have a few ideas." They kissed each other gently as the soft serenity drifted on for decades and centuries, millennia passing as if a blink to their immortal souls. Infinity stretching before and behind them, the undead monsters finally found the peace that had eluded them for so long.


End file.
